Guide to

the Open Cloud

Open cloud projects profiled

A Linux Foundation publication

January 2015

www.linuxfoundation.org

Introduction
The open source cloud computing landscape has changed
significantly since we published our first cloud guide in
October 2013.
This revised version adds new projects
and technology categories that have since
gained importance, and in some cases
radically change how companies approach
building and deploying an open source
cloud architecture.
In 2013, many cloud projects were still
working out their core enterprise features
and furiously building in functionality. And
enterprises were still very much in the early
stages of planning and testing their public,
private or hybrid cloudsand largely at the
orchestration layer.
Now, not only have cloud projects
consistently (and sometimes dramatically)
grown their user and developer
communities, lines of code and commits
over the past year, their software is
increasingly enterprise-ready. And enterprise
use, in turn, has advanced beyond testing to
deployment at the orchestration layer and on
up the stack.
This advancing maturity of the software,
combined with increasing enterprise cloud
adoption, has created a growing interest in
and demand for open source solutions from
cloud service providers and companies alike.
Witness, for example, the plethora of
OpenStack distributions announced from
new and existing service providers such as
HP, IBM, Mirantis, Rackspace and Red Hat
that create viable competition for Amazon
Web Services.

See also the rise of Linux container

technology with the advent of Docker
and its emerging ecosystem. You will be
hard pressed to find an enterprise Linux
distribution that isnt yet working on Docker
integration and touting its new container
strategy. Even VMware vSphere, Google
Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure are
rushing to adapt their cloud platforms to the
open source Docker project.
This rapid pace of innovation and resulting
disruption of existing platforms and vendors
can now serve as a solid case study for
the role of open source software and
collaboration in advancing the cloud.
Other components of the cloud infrastructure
have also followed suit, hoping to harness
the power of collaboration. The Linux
Foundations OpenDaylight project, for
example, had grown to include 290
contributors and 44 member companies in
the past year to advance software-defined
networking.
Similarly, the newly announced Open
Platform for Network Functions Virtualization
Project (OPNFV), also a Linux Foundation
Collaborative Project, will look to accomplish
rapid progress for an open source NFV
platform that already has broad support
from many of the most influential telecom
companies.
The open source cloud is evolving quickly
and its fueling dramatic enterprise innovation

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

and growth across industries. If 2014 was

the year that enterprises started executing
on their cloud strategies, then 2015 will be
the year that enterprise developers and
applications begin a wholesale migration to
the cloud and companies take another step
toward delivering web-scale IT.
Underlying this trend is Linux, which remains
the go-to choice for the cloud, with 75
percent of enterprises reporting that they
use Linux as their primary cloud platform,
according to our 2014 Enterprise End User
Trends Report.
What follows is a snapshot of some of the
projects that form the basis of this cloud
computing revolution today.

The purpose of this paper

At each level of the cloud stackstarting
with a kernel on bare metal and advancing
through orchestration and management, on
up to the application layerenterprises face
a host of options and thus difficult decisions
as to which components will best meet their
own unique needs.
The purpose of this paper is to serve as a
starting point for users considering which
projects to use in building and deploying
their own open clouds.
By engaging with our members in the tech
industry and organizing CloudOpen conferences
in North America and Europe, ApacheCon,
and developer conferences such as MesosCon
for projects such as Apache Mesos, we keep
track of the many projects, technologies and
companies that are driving the cloud.
This paper is a curated list of profiles that
aims to distill this knowledge into a useful
guide. It is by no means a comprehensive
list of all cloud-related open source software.

Neither does this paper attempt to predict

which projects will continue to be relevant in
the long term.
Given the track record of these projects, however,
and the larger trends in cloud and open
source adoption, we believe these projects
have the attributes of open cloud technologies
that will continue to drive innovation in
enterprise IT in the coming year and beyond.

What is the Open Cloud?

The projects on this list can all be safely
defined as part of the open source cloud.
While some in the cloud industry assert
that an open API constitutes an open cloud
project, we disagree.
To us, and to most in the open source
community, the open cloud means:

Every component, from the software to

the APIs used by application developers,

is open to vendors and customers alike.

The project is released under an open

source license approved by the Open

Source Initiative (OSI) which guarantees
full and unrestricted access to its
codebase. Examples include the GPL
used by the Linux kernel or an alternative
such as the Apache or MIT licenses.

An active and diverse community of users

and contributors support the project.

Why is the Open Cloud

Important?
Open cloud projects have made great
progress over the past few years in an effort
to build an enterprise alternative to large
proprietary public clouds that are open at
every level of the stack.

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

This is important in order to realize the

vision of a truly portable cloud that allows
interoperability between cloud providers and
private cloud infrastructure.
But much work remains to ensure that
this next generation computing platform
remains as free and open as the technology
on which it is built. By paying attention to
these significant projects, using them and
importantlycontributing back upstream, you
can help accelerate technological innovation
and benefit in the process.
Companies that use and participate in open
source cloud projects enjoy all of the same
advantages as those involved in pioneering
open source projects such as Linux:

Improved code quality of the underlying

cloud infrastructure

Increased security with the ability to find

and fix vulnerabilities

To be most helpful, weve limited the list to less

than 10 projects in each category including
hypervisor and container; cloud operating
systems; Infrastructure as a Service; Platform
as a Service; provisioning and management;
storage; and software-defined networking and
network functions virtualization.
Projects were selected for the list based
on their relevance to the open cloud, their
relative maturity and their relative visibility.
More specifically, benchmarks
for consideration included:

The projects origins

Age of the project
Number of contributors
Number and frequency of commits
Diversity of contributions
Exposure
Demonstrated enterprise use

Visibility into every layer of the

infrastructure

Code access in order to add features and

Expert opinions from within the open

source community.

influence the direction of the technology

Insurance against lock-in through

portability to other platforms

Lower cost through shared development

And more.

Estimates for lines of code are courtesy of

Open Hub, and licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Profile Methodology
The open cloud is flourishing, with new
projects forming at a steady pace to innovate
and fill in the gaps as cloud infrastructure and
web application deployment practices evolve.
The number of new Docker-related
orchestration and management projects
founded in the past year alone, for example,
could fill several pages of this report.

All profile data, with the exception of lines

of code, was collected from public sources,
including project websites and source code
repositories and was fact-checked with
each project.

Please note that a projects omission isnt a

judgement on its quality or prospects. There
are simply too many projects to include all
of the viable alternatives. As technology
evolves, so does the list and we welcome
input from the community. Several projects
that werent included last year, for example,
have been added.

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Weve also added SDN and NFV as a

new category to pay attention to in the
coming year due to the increasing maturity
of the projects.
Although its still very early days in open
source networking, forward-thinking
companies have already begun to assess the
potential of these projects and plan for future
deployments.
Also new to the paper this year is an
interesting development in the open
cloud arena: the promise of lightweight

cloud operating systems tailored to web

applications, mobile and embedded systems
and specialized use cases.
While this is still an emerging area, the
technology is sound and promises to lay
the foundation for an even larger cloud
ecosystem around mobile computing and the
Internet of Things.
All profile information in this report is also available
online in the Linux.com open cloud directory at
www.linux.com/directory/open-cloud.

Profiles
Hypervisor and container
Docker

Description

Docker automates the deployment of applications inside a lightweight Linux

container.

History

Docker was written and released by dotCloud in 2013.

Website

www.docker.com

Key Contributors

Citrix, Docker (formerly dotCloud), Google, Kickstarter,

Microsoft, Red Hat

Commercial Support

Docker

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Go (88%)

Lines of Code

149,584

Key Users

Baidu, eBay, Gilt, Google, Microsoft, New Relic, Rackspace, Spotify, Yandex,
Yelp

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

KVM
Description

KVM is a lightweight hypervisor that was accepted into the Linux kernel in
February 2007.

History

KVM was originally developed by Qumranet, a startup that was acquired by

Red Hat in 2008. In 2013 the Open Virtualization Alliance, a Linux Foundation
Collaborative Project, began an initiative to increase awareness and adoption
of KVM.

Website

www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page

Key Contributors

HP, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat

Commercial Support

HP, IBM, Red Hat

Project License

GPL

Primary Programming
Language

C (95%)

Lines of Code

13,400,298

Key Users

HP, IBM, Illumos, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SmartOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server, Ubuntu

Linux Containers (LXC)

Description

Lightweight virtual machines enabled by functions within the Linux kernel,

including cgroups, namespaces and security modules. Userspace tools
coordinate kernel features and manipulate container images to create and
manage system or application containers.

History

The effort to develop container functionality in the upstream Linux kernel

began in 2006. Userspace tools to manage containers, including Lxc
and libvirt-lxc (both initially developed at IBM), quickly appeared. LXC 1.0,
released in February 2014, is the first production-ready version of the LXC
toolset.

Website

linuxcontainers.org

Key Contributors

Canonical, IBM, Oracle

Commercial Support

Canonical

Project License

LGPLv2.1+

Primary Programming
Language

Lines of Code

48,048

Key Users

Canonical, Debian, Heroku, Oracle, SUSE

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Xen Project
Description

Xen is a cross-platform software hypervisor that runs on BSD,

Linux and Solaris.

History

Xen was originally written at the University of Cambridge by a team led by Ian
Pratt. It became a Linux Foundation collaborative project in 2013.

Website

www.xenproject.org

Key Contributors

Amazon, AMD, Cavium, Citrix, Intel, Linaro, NSA, Oracle, SUSE, Verizon

Commercial Support

Citrix, Oracle

Project License

GPL

Primary Programming
Language

C (84%)

Lines of Code

495,280

Key Users

Alibaba, Amazon, Citrix, GlobalLogic, Google, IBM Softlayer, Oracle,

Rackspace, SUSE Linux, Verizon

Cloud Operating Systems

Apache Mesos

Description

Mesos is an open source cluster management tool also described as an

operating system kernel for the data center.

History

It began as a UC Berkeley research project, which was adopted commercially

by Twitter. It became a top-level Apache Foundation project in 2013.

Website

mesos.apache.org

Key Contributors

Mesosphere, Twitter

Commercial Support

Mesosphere

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

C++

Lines of Code

130,762

Key Users

AirBnB, Atlassian, eBay, Hubspot, Netflix, PayPal, Twitter

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

CoreOS
Description

A lightweight Linux distribution designed for running large-scale cluster

deployments. Applications run inside of containers to isolate them from the
operating system.

History

Founded by Alex Polvi, Brandon Philips and Michael Marineau in 2013.

Website

coreos.com

Key Contributors

CoreOS

Commercial Support

CoreOS, Inc.

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Go

Lines of Code

300,000

Key Users

Deis, MemSQL, ModCloth, Rackspace

OSv
Description

OSv is an open source cloud operating system designed to run a single

application on top of a hypervisor.

History

Released in 2013 by former KVM developers and co-founders of Cloudius

Systems, the projects closed beta was released in late 2014.

Website

osv.io

Key Contributors

Cloudius Systems

Commercial Support

Cloudius Systems

Project License

BSD-2-Clause FreeBSD

Primary Programming
Language

C, C++

Lines of Code

361,109

Key Users

NA

Note: Other projects in the early stages include Red Hats Project Atomic, which emerged in 2014 as a lightweight Linux
distribution based on RHEL for running Docker containers; and MirageOS, a cloud operating system for building lightweight
network applications on top of the Xen hypervisor.

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Infrastructure as a Service
Apache CloudStack
Description

CloudStack is an open source IaaS platform with Amazon Web Services

(AWS) compatibility.

History

CloudStack was originally created by Cloud.com (formerly known as VMOps),

a startup that was purchased by Citrix in 2011. In April of 2012, CloudStack
was donated by Citrix to the Apache Software Foundation.

Website

cloudstack.apache.org

Key Contributors

Citrix, Clogeny, Cloudera, McAfee (Intel), Schuberg Philis,

ShapeBlue, Solidfire

Commercial Support

Citrix

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Java (75%)

Lines of Code

1,577,071

Key Users

Alcatel Lucent, British Telecommunications, CenturyLink, Datapipe, Edmunds.

com, Fujitsu, IBM (Softlayer), Nokia, NTT, Orange, TATA Communications,
TomTom, Verizon, WebMD, Zynga

Eucalyptus

Description

Eucalyptus is an open-source IaaS platform with AWS compatibility.

History

Eucalyptus began as a research project at UC Santa Barbara. It was

commercialized in January 2009 and acquired by HP in 2014.

Website

www.eucalyptus.com

Key Contributors

HP

Commercial Support

HP

Project License

GPLv3

Primary Programming
Language

Java (54%)

Lines of Code

1,542,831

Key Users

AppDynamics, MemSQL, Mosaik Solutions, NASA, Nokia

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

OpenNebula
Description

OpenNebula is an open-source IaaS platform for on-premise and public

cloud services.

History

OpenNebula began as a research project in 2005 authored by Ignacio M.

Llorente and Rubn S. Montero. Publicly released in 2008, development
today is via the open source model.

Website

www.opennebula.org

Key Contributors

OpenNebula Systems (formerly C12G Labs)

Commercial Support

ClassCat, Inovex, Netways, OpenNebula Systems, Terradue

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

C++ (32%), Ruby (26%), Javascript (20%)

Lines of Code

268,262

Key Users

Akamai, BBC, Blackberry, CentOS, China Mobile, Deutsche Post ESA,

Produban - Santander Bank

OpenStack

10

Description

OpenStack is an open source IaaS platform.

History

In July of 2010, NASA and Rackspace joined forces to create the OpenStack
project, with a goal of allowing any organization to provide cloud services
similar to those available from public cloud providers.

Website

www.openstack.org

Key Contributors

Cisco, HP, IBM, Mirantis, NEC, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE

Commercial Support

Aptira, Canonical, Cisco, CloudScaling, EasyStack, eNovance, HP, IBM,

Metacloud, Mirantis, Oracle, Piston, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE, SwiftStack

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Python (71%)

Lines of Code

2,334,355

Key Users

Bluehost, Canonical, CERN, Cisco, GoDaddy, HP, HubSpot, IBM, Intel,

PayPal, SUSE, Wells Fargo

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Platform as a Service
Apache Stratos
Description

Apache Stratos is an open source enterprise PaaS framework that helps run
Apache Tomcat, PHP, and MySQL applications.

History

Developed by middleware company WSO2, Stratos became an Apache

project in 2013 and reached top-level status in May 2014.

Website

stratos.apache.org

Key Contributors

Cisco, Citrix, Indiana University, SUSE, WSO2

Commercial Support

WSO2

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Java

Lines of Code

465,806

Key Users

Cisco, WSO2

Cloud Foundry

11

Description

Cloud Foundry is an open source PaaS for managing application deployment

and ongoing operations. Cloud Foundry provides extensible support for
deploying many programming languages and runtimes as Linux containers
across cloud infrastructures.

History

Cloud Foundry was developed within VMware, and launched on April 2011.
Pivotal became the steward of Cloud Foundry in 2012, and collaborated
with the open source ecosystem to make Cloud Foundry a communitydriven standard cloud platform. Cloud Foundry became a Linux Foundation
Collaborative Project in December 2014.

Website

cloudfoundry.org

Key Contributors

Canonical, CenturyLink, IBM, Intel, Pivotal, VMware

Commercial Support

ActiveState, AppFog (CenturyLink), HP, IBM, Pivotal

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (32%), Go (30%), Java (11%), JavaScript (8%)

Lines of Code

777,316

Key Users

AT&T, Baidu, BNY Mellon, Cisco, Monsanto, NTT Communications, Rakuten,

SAP, Verizon

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Deis
Description

Deis is an open source PaaS that builds upon Docker and CoreOS to provide
a lightweight PaaS with a Heroku-inspired workflow.

History

Deis was written by OpDemand and released in 2013.

Website

deis.io

Key Contributors

OpDemand

Commercial Support

OpDemand

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Python and Go

Lines of Code

56,736

Key Users

Pylon, ShopKeep, SOFICOM

OpenShift Origin
Description

OpenShift Origin is the upstream open source project for Red Hats Platform
as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is a platform where developers and
teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

History

The OpenShift technology came from Red Hats 2010 acquisition of start-up
Makara (founded in May 2008). OpenShift was announced in May 2011 and
open-sourced in April 2012.

Website

openshift.redhat.com/app

Key Contributors

Red Hat

Commercial Support

Red Hat

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (64%)

Lines of Code

759,310

Key Users

Boeing, Cisco, FICO, PayPal

Note: Flynn is also a new Docker and CoreOS-based PaaS, currently in pre-production beta.

12

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Provisioning and Management Tool

Ansible
Description

Ansible is open source cloud automation software for application deployment

and configuration management on multi-tier architectures.

History

AnsibleWorks (now Ansible Inc.) was founded in 2012 by Red Hat veterans
Said Ziouani and Michael DeHaan. Ansible 1.0 was released in 2013.

Website

www.ansible.com

Key Contributors

Ansible Inc., Rackspace, Suncorp

Commercial Support

Ansible Inc.

Project License

GPLv3

Primary Programming
Language

Python (90%)

Lines of Code

70,638

Key Users

Atlassian, Care.com, EA, Evernote, GoPro, Motorola, NASA, Spotify, Twitter,

Verisign, Weight Watchers

Chef

13

Description

Chef is a configuration-management tool, controlled using an extension of Ruby.

History

Released by Chef Software (formerly Opscode) in January 2009.

Website

www.chef.io/chef/

Key Contributors

Chef Software

Commercial Support

Chef Software

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (92%)

Lines of Code

136,135

Key Users

Disney, Etsy, Facebook, GE, Nordstrom, Riot Games, Splunk, Yahoo

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Juju
Description

Juju is a service orchestration management tool.

History

Juju was released by Canonical as Ensemble in 2011 and then renamed later
that year.

Website

juju.ubuntu.com

Key Contributors

Canonical

Commercial Support

Canonical

Project License

AGPL

Primary Programming
Language

Go (75%)

Lines of Code

360,464

Key Users

Canonical, Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Yahoo! Japan

Kubernetes

14

Description

Kubernetes is an orchestration and management tool for Docker container

clusters.

History

Developed by Google and released as open source in 2014, Kubernetes is in

pre-production beta.

Website

github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes

Key Contributors

Docker, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, VMWare

Commercial Support

Google

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Go (91%)

Lines of Code

127,826

Key Users

CoreOS, Docker, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mesosphere, Red Hat, SaltStack,

VMWare

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

ManageIQ
Description

ManageIQ is a hybrid cloud management tool to manage services running on

cloud and virtualization platforms.

History

Developed as a proprietary system by ManageIQ, which was acquired by

Red Hat in 2012, it is the upstream community of Red Hats CloudForms
offering and was released as open source in June, 2014.

Website

manageiq.org

Key Contributors

Booz Allen Hamilton, Chef, CiRBA, Navteca, Synnefo, Red Hat

Commercial Support

Red Hat

Project License

Apache 2.0, GPL

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (84%)

Lines of Code

1,204,584

Key Users

Booz Allen Hamilton, Cox Automotive, Navteca, Synnefo

oVirt

15

Description

oVirt provides a complete management system, via web, command-line or

APIs, for virtualized servers with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests.

History

Red Hat first announced oVirt as part of its emerging-technology initiative

in 2008, then re-launched the project in late 2011 as part of the Open
Virtualization Alliance, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.

Website

www.ovirt.org

Key Contributors

Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat, SUSE

Commercial Support

Red Hat, UDS Enterprise, Wind River

Project License

Apache 2.0, GPL

Primary Programming
Language

Java (62%)

Lines of Code

1,038,304

Key Users

Alterway, Brussels Airport, IT-Novum, JProfiler, Nimbus Concept, Nieuwland

Geo-Informatie

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Puppet
Description

Puppet is a configuration-management tool, controlled using a domainspecific language.

History

Founded by Luke Kanies in 2005.

Website

www.puppetlabs.com

Key Contributors

Puppet Labs

Commercial Support

Puppet Labs

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (98%)

Lines of Code

366,869

Key Users

CERN, Cisco, Citrix, GitHub, Intel, NetApp, New Relic, NYSE, Oracle, PayPal,
Racksapce, Red Hat, Salesforce, Twitter, Verizon

Salt

16

Description

Salt is an open source tool for data center automation, cloud orchestration,
server provisioning, and configuration management.

History

Salt was written by Thomas Hatch and first released in 2011.

Website

www.saltstack.com

Key Contributors

Saltstack

Commercial Support

Saltstack

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Python (91%)

Lines of Code

208,756

Key Users

Adobe, HP, LinkedIn, Photobucket, Rackspace, Samsung

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Vagrant
Description

Vagrant is an open source configuration management tool for virtual

development environments.

History

Vagrant was written in 2010 by Mitchell Hashimoto and John Bender.

Website

www.vagrantup.com

Key Contributors

Changepoint, Hashicorp, Reaktor, SUSE, VMWare

Commercial Support

Hashicorp

Project License

MIT

Primary Programming
Language

Ruby (79%)

Lines of Code

56,234

Key Users

BBC, DISQUS, Expedia, Mozilla, Nokia, OReilly

Note: Companies such as Airbnb, Apple and Twitter use Mesos frameworks including Apache Aurora, Chronos and Marathon
to help manage batch jobs or scheduling on a Mesos cluster.

Storage
Apache Cassandra

17

Description

Cassandra is a highly scalable, eventually consistent, distributed, structured

key-value store.

History

Cassandra was developed at Facebook and released as open source in 2008.

Website

cassandra.apache.org

Key Contributors

DataStax

Commercial Support

Cubet Technologies, DataStax, Impetus Technologies, Instaclustr, ONZRA,

Palomino, Sohum, URimagination, Workware Systems

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Java (96%)

Lines of Code

245,182

Key Users

Apple, Constant Contact, CERN, Comcast, eBay, GitHub, GoDaddy, Hulu,

Instagram, Intuit, Netflix, Reddit, The Weather Channel

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Ceph
Description

Ceph is a distributed object store and file system.

History

Ceph was originally created by Sage Weil for a doctoral dissertation in 2004.
In 2012, Weil and others formed Inktank to deliver professional services and
support. Red Hat acquired Inktank in 2014.

Website

ceph.com

Key Contributors

Red Hat

Commercial Support

Red Hat

Project License

LGPL

Primary Programming
Language

C++ (70%)

Lines of Code

572,783

Key Users

CERN, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, DinCloud, DreamHost

CouchDB

18

Description

CouchDB is a distributed document database system.

History

Created in 2005 by Damien Katz, who self-funded it for two years before
releasing it as an open source project supported by Katzs company
CouchOne. It became an Apache project in 2008 and the first stable version
was released in 2010.

Website

couchdb.apache.org

Key Contributors

Couchbase, IBM Cloudant

Commercial Support

Couchbase, IBM Cloudant

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Javascript (55%), Erlang (34%)

Lines of Code

254,067

Key Users

Couchbase, dotCloud, IBM Cloudant

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

GlusterFS
Description

GlusterFS is a scale-out NAS file system.

History

GlusterFS was originally developed by Gluster Inc., then by Red Hat after its
2011 purchase of Gluster.

Website

www.gluster.org

Key Contributors

Red Hat

Commercial Support

Red Hat

Project License

GPL 3

Primary Programming
Language

C (93%)

Lines of Code

1,485,967

Key Users

Brightcove, Cutting Edge, Intuit, Picture Marketing

MongoDB

19

Description

MongoDB is a high performance document database.

History

Created by former DoubleClick employees who later co-founded 10gen (Now

MongoDB Inc.) in 2007. They released the software as open source in 2009.

Website

www.mongodb.com

Key Contributors

MongoDB Inc.

Commercial Support

MongoDB Inc.

Project License

Apache 2.0 and AGPL 1.0

Primary Programming
Language

C++

Lines of Code

649,261

Key Users

ADP, Bosch, City of Chicago, Crittercism, Expedia, Forbes, MetLife, Otto,

and The Weather Channel

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Redis
Description

Redis is an open source key value cache and store.

History

Written by Salvatore Sanfilippo and Pieter Noordhuis.

Website

redis.io

Key Contributors

Pivotal, Redis Labs

Commercial Support

Pivotal

Project License

BSD

Primary Programming
Language

C (66%)

Lines of Code

121,023

Key Users

Hulu, Microsoft, Pinterest, Redis Labs, Twitter, Viacom

Riak CS

20

Description

Riak CS is an open source storage system built on top of the Riak key-value store.

History

Riak CS was originally developed by Basho and launched in 2012, with the
source subsequently released in 2013.

Website

basho.com/riak-cloud-storage

Key Contributors

Basho

Commercial Support

Basho

Project License

Apache

Primary Programming
Language

Erlang (93%)

Lines of Code

29,206

Key Users

Best Buy, Boundary, Bump, Queep, Rovio

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

Swift
Description

Swift is a highly available, distributed, eventually consistent object store. Its

developed as part of the OpenStack project but can be used independently.

History

Swift was created in 2010 by Rackspace, which contributed the code to

create OpenStack Object Storage.

Website

wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Swift

Key Contributors

HP, Intel, Rackspace, Red Hat, SwiftStack

Commercial Support

Swiftstack

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Python

Lines of Code

90,739

Key Users

Comcast, Disney, eBay, HP, IBM, Mercado Libre, NTT, Rackspace,

Time Warner Cable, Vimeo, Wikipedia

Software-defined Networking, Network Functions Virtualization

OpenContrail

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Description

OpenContrail is an open source software-defined networking project that

provides all the necessary components for network virtualization including an
SDN controller, virtual router, analytics engine, and published northbound APIs.

History

Juniper Networks released its Contrail code library for open source
development in 2013.

Website

opencontrail.org

Key Contributors

CertusNet, Cloudwatt, Codilime, ENovance, IPNett, Nokia, Piston, TCP Cloud,

Semihalf Embedded Systems

Commercial Support

Cloudscaling, CloudStack, IBM, Juniper Networks

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

C++

Lines of Code

382,317

Key Users

Cloud Dynamics, Gencore Systems, Mirantis, Scalr, Ubuntu

Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

OpenDaylight
Description

OpenDaylight is an open source platform for network programmability to

enable SDN and NFV. The software components include a fully pluggable
controller, interfaces, protocol plug-ins and applications.

History

Founded in 2013 by industry leaders and hosted as a Linux Foundation

Collaborative Project, OpenDaylight had two software releases in 2014.

Website

www.opendaylight.org

Key Contributors

Brocade, Cisco, Inocybe, NEC, Noiro Networks, Pantheon, Radware, Red Hat

Commercial Support

ADVA Optical, Brocade, Calient, Ciena, Cisco, Cyan, Dell, Extreme Networks,
HP, IBM, Inocybe, Meru, Microsoft, Midokura and Oracle

Project License

EPL-1.0

Primary Programming
Language

Java

Lines of Code

1,904,823

Key Users

NA

Open vSwitch
Description

Open vSwitch is an open source virtual switch designed to enable massive

network automation while still supporting standard management interfaces in
distributed computing.

History

Released as open source in 2009 by Nicira, which was acquired by VMware

in 2012.

Website

openvswitch.org

Key Contributors

VA Linux, VMware

Commercial Support

Citrix (XenServer), VMware (NSX)

Project License

Apache 2.0

Primary Programming
Language

Lines of Code

222,591

Key Users

Apache CloudStack, Citrix, KVM, OpenNebula, openQRM, OpenStack, oVirt,

Proxmox VE, VirtualBox

Note: ONOS (Open Networking Operating System) is an experimental distributed SDN operating system released as open
source in December 2014 and hosted by the nonprofit Open Networking Lab (On.Lab). Key Contributors include AT&T, Ciena,
Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, NEC, NSF, and NTT Communications.
Flannel (formerly Rudder) is an emerging open source SDN project under development by CoreOS that creates an overlay
network to allow an IP subnet to be assigned for each virtual machine for use with Kubernetes, regardless of the cloud provider.

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Guide to the Open Cloud: Open cloud projects profiled

The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by

providing unified resources and services needed for open source to
successfully compete with closed platforms.
To learn more about The Linux Foundation or our other initiatives
please visit us at www.linuxfoundation.org